


Groundhog Day

by AvocadoLove



Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Groundhog Day, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 02:55:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 5,033
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/645766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AvocadoLove/pseuds/AvocadoLove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first day out on patrol as the new Batman, John Blake is killed by Bane. Then he wakes up at the beginning of the same day. Over and over.  (Or: Groundhog Day AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Day 1

**Author's Note:**

> Eventual trigger warnings for suicide (sorta) and dub-con.
> 
> Based on [this](http://tdkr-kink.livejournal.com/2798.html?thread=2216174#t2216174) kink meme prompt

_Then put your little hand in mine  
There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb... _

  
  
John woke, cold and sore, to the sound of his crappy radio alarm. Rubbing the sleep from his eyes, he rolled over and slapped the 'snooze' button. The Sonny and Cher song cut off and the bat cave around him fell into silence, save for the distant tap-tap of dripping water.  
  
 _Today's the day_ , he thought, and at that moment he didn't care how permanently damp the air was, how his thin bedroll didn't do shit against the stone surface of the cave, how deep down inside he didn't know if he was more terrified or excited. Today was the day. Today he became the Batman.  
  
It took a few days to figure out how to adjust the suit Bruce Wayne had left to fit John's smaller frame. Too bad the thing didn't come with a manual. He'd learned some of the tricks of it the hard way -- almost cut himself on one of the razor-sharp blades that came from the forearms, and somehow activated the electric defense. That stung, and his index finger still felt sort of numb two days after.  
  
But it didn't matter. It would be worth it. Gotham City hadn't really begun to pick itself up only a month after the occupation. If the police scanner was right, the seedy side of the criminal underworld was recovering faster than most.  
  
Gotham needed Batman and tonight he would return.  
  
Smiling wasn't John's thing. He'd practiced faking it too many times to be genuine, but if he had been the smiling type, he would have been grinning like a loon as he pushed aside his thin blanket and got up to prepare for the night to come.  
  


* * *

  
  
_I am the night. I am the shadows,_ John repeated to himself over and over again. Maybe it helped. He didn't remember Bruce Wayne's footsteps ever being this loud when he'd been in the suit. Hell, even the cape made a rustling noise he could hear under the cowl.  
  
John rolled his shoulder, hoping to -- he didn't know, settle the fabric somehow? -- but the plastic or kevlar or whatever the suit was made from only squeaked, making more racket. How was Batman able to come and go like this?  
  
It didn't matter. This was only his first night patrol, and although John hadn't stopped any criminal activity yet, it would only be a matter of time. Besides, once enough people got eyes on him, rumors would spread that the Batman wasn't dead. Propaganda was a powerful weapon. The occupation had shown him that much.  
  
John ducked in and out of a narrow alleyway, but all he came across was a drunken hobo, curled up behind a dumpster. Maybe next time he would bring his police scanner. Or maybe the suit had something already installed. He knew there were things he hadn't found--  
  
The slight crunch of gravel under shoe was the only warning he had. John spun about. Then looked up. And up.  
  
He'd seen Bane in person, from a distance, several times during the occupation. But it was like seeing any large animal like a bull or a draft horse. Large, but manageable at a distance. Mind-bogglingly huge up close and personal.  
  
It wasn't possible. It was only illusion, but Bane seemed to up all of the air in the alleyway. John never felt so small in comparison, not since he finally hit his growth spurt as mousey teenager.  
  
"You're supposed to be dead," John blurted.  
  
The terrorist Bane, terror of Gotham, cocked his head slightly to the side. Like a mildly curious dog. John heard it when he inhaled: a mechanical rasp. "I was about to say the same. But you are not Bruce Wayne."

Calm certainty solidified in John's mind. This was why Bruce had left him the suit. This was what he was here for. Someone had to carry on. He'd finish what Bruce started, like passing on the baton in a relay race. And when Bane was dead, John would be the Batman.  
  
John threw his best right hook. It landed wide.  
  
Bane reached out, almost casually, and grabbed him by the throat. One flex of the corded steel of Bane's muscles and John felt/heard something go _crunch_. His mouth filled with the thick iron taste of his own blood. When Bane released him, John fell to the ground, his lungs spasming but drawing no air.  
  
Bane had crushed his windpipe.  
  
 _No,_ John thought. _No, it can't end like this._ But the last thing he saw was the bottom of Bane's boot as it came down over his face.  
  
  


* * *

  


  
_Then put your little hand in mine_  
There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb...

John woke, cold and sore, to the sound of his crappy radio alarm.


	2. Day 2

**Day 2.**  
  
  
It had to have been a dream.

John had never exactly had a dream that was so mundane (except for the last part with Bane) or long before, but he’d been under a lot of stress over the last seven months. Some guys snapped or drank. His brain, evidently, gave him dreams that seemed to last an entire day. Whatever.  
  
So John went about setting up the batcave for his first patrol, ignoring the feeling (it wasn’t a memory. It _wasn’t._ ) he’d done this before.  
  
The suit fit him just as it had in the dream, but he’d tried on pieces of it separately while learning how the thing fit. It was entirely logical — probable even — that his sleeping mind put it together and imagined it in super-realistic detail.  
  
 _Maybe it wasn’t a dream_ , a part of him thought. _Maybe it’s an omen of tonight._  
  
But that was—no. John didn’t see the future. Obviously if he could, his life would have turned out a hell of a lot different.  
  
It was a dream and Bane was dead because the Batman killed him before sacrificing himself for the city. That was his story and he was sticking to it.  
  
But the night air, when John stepped out in the suit, felt the same against his skin. Dryer than in the batcave, but colder. The metal and plastic from the suit seemed to suck heat out rather than keep it in. Tomorrow, he was wearing a thermal under the armor.  
  
As in the dream, he didn’t run into any trouble on his patrol. He tried to stay away from the alley, but… he was rattled. This was all too strange. He found himself there anyway, staring down at a spot in the asphalt and thinking, _I died here last night._ Curb stomped by a monster.  
  
Then he heard the sound of gravel under one large foot.  
  
John turned and — shit. There he was again, seeming to take up the entire alleyway, his head slightly cocked.  
  
This time John didn’t bother with a punch. He charged, head down, shoulders forward. Bane reached for his throat, just as he knew he would, but John ducked enough to make sure he wasn’t in the same place and hit Bane full on.  
  
It was sort of like trying to shoulder past a brick wall, with about as much affect.  
  
Two large hands closed around John and suddenly his feet were kicking at empty air and his back was smashed against the wall. In desperation, John grabbed for the mask, but Bane batted him away with no effort.  
  
“You aren’t Bruce Wayne.” The mechanical voice was… oddly calm. Maybe even bored. “Who are you?”  
  
John’s heart was tripping at a million miles a second. He looked Bane in the eyes — he had gray eyes. Kinda pretty. “I,” he wheezed, “am the God damned Batman.”  
  
Bane made a sound that might have been a chuckle, if it hadn’t been strangled at its birth. Then he slammed John’s head against the wall.  
  
In the second before death, John thought: _It wasn’t a dream afterall. It was a prophesy, and I—._  
  
  


* * *

_Then put your little hand in mine  
There ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb… _  


  
  
John woke, cold and sore, to the sound of his crappy radio alarm.


	3. Day 3 and 4

**Day 3.**

 

God help him, it wasn't a dream.

(Maybe it was a dream within a dream -- he'd once seen a movie about that, but had fallen asleep in the theater mid-way through.)

John examined the Batman suit with a careful eye, looking for signs of wear or scuff marks. Something that would show he'd had not one, but two fights to the death. If he could call them fights at all. Bane had destroyed him.

There was nothing. No sign of wear at all. 

Maybe he was cracking up, but he didn't think so. John sat on the edge of the raised platform in the middle of the cave, his legs dangling over the edge, and thought.

It was like... like he was a player in that video game he used to play at one of his foster homes. Mario would fall in a hole or touch a goomba, die, and be reborn at a pre-set point.

As crazy as it sounded, maybe, just maybe John was Mario and Bane was the boss at the end. Too bad John couldn't throw fire balls. But he might have something better.

John was still learning as he went with the suit. Bruce Wayne's computers were still in the cave, but the hard drives were wiped. There was no manual or information database for John to reference. He had to learn everything by trial and error.

It took most of the day to get ready.

John went to the alley earlier than he had before and found a spot in the shadow of a dumpster where he could lie in wait. The suit was good for blending into the shadows.

When Bane arrived, John didn't bother with the pleasantries (he liked to think they'd gotten past that point)  he just leapt from the shadows with a yell and attacked. Bane was too quick for someone of his size, and although he didn't avoid John's blows, he somehow deflected them so John ended up punching a shoulder instead of his stupid masked face.

Bane closed to grab John, and the settings John had spent the entire day working on sprung to life. There was an electric snap, a shower of sparks, and Bane let out a yell that was more like a roar and reeled back among the scent of ozone.

Turns out the shock setting on the suit could be turned up. Too bad it was a one-time use.

John had hoped it would be enough to floor the monster (it had stunned him for a good five minutes when he tested it out on himself), but of course Bane seemed merely put off than stunned.

"You aren't Bruce Wayne," Bane observed, backing two steps. His hands settled by his chest, thumbs hooking in the catches of his jacket. "Yet I see you are clever, in your own way."

John couldn't manage a raspy Batman voice without seriously ripping up his throat, but his natural timbre was deep enough to be intimidating. He hoped.  "I'm giving you one chance, Bane. Leave Gotham. This is my city now."

Again, Bane did that head tilt. "You think one small success grants you victory?" Then he moved so fast, John found himself lifted, scrabbling at impossibly strong hands before he had a chance to fight back. "Allow me to show you what victory is."

Bane threw him backwards a good ten feet. John hit the ground hard and rolled, fetching up against the dumpster.

Fear hit him, then. There hadn't been time for it in the last two encounters, but John's heart wanted to jackhammer out of his chest. He was going to die. Again. He tried to rise, but his boot slipped on a the slimy concrete and Bane was so fast...

John tried to block the first kick with his forearm. That was a mistake. He felt bone splinter and agony tore a scream from his throat. Then a massive weight straddled his hips and fists like sledgehammers rained down on his torso, his face.

John's last words that day were, "Tomorrow, I'm bringing a gun," snarled through a mush of bloody teeth. He swore he caught a glimpse of confusion in Bane's gray eyes -- they were really, really pretty eyes -- before his ribs broke and it was too hard to breathe much less speak.

It took longer than usual to die, that night.

 

* * *

 

 

**Day 4.**

 

 _Then put your little hand in mine_  
There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb...  


John woke, cold and sore, to the sound of his crappy radio alarm. His tongue felt around the inside of his mouth, probing for shards of teeth he'd felt crack and break under Bane's fists, but... he was whole and undamaged and alive.

 _Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me._ Well, now he was officially on number four. It was time to stop dicking around.

He'd thrown his service piece to the side after the death of those construction workers. John still didn't like thinking about it, even after all these months. It had been so easy to kill them. Even knowing what he knew now, he wished he had found another way.

Batman didn't need guns, but Batman had never found himself in a time loop (to John's knowledge). And he was officially sick of being beaten to death.

It used up the last of John's savings to procure another handgun and it took nearly an hour to convince the dirty pawn shop owner that he wasn't a cop anymore, and to just sell him one of the illegal weapons John knew he kept behind the counter.

He couldn't shake the feeling that he was a traitor to everything Batman stood for as he crouched again in the shadow of the dumpster and waited for Bane.

John held his breath as the man walked past him, silent as a ghost. He didn't even hear the crunch of gravel under his shoes, which meant the times he _had_ heard it before had been deliberate on Bane's part. For the first time he wondered what Bane was doing there at all -- where was he going, and where had he come from -- but then Bane had walked safely past and it was time.

John rose smoothly from his crouch. He swore that he didn't make any noise, but Bane was already starting to turn and John raised the gun and--

It took one shot. John had always gotten high marks in the academy for marksmanship. A neat hole appeared from the side of the head, just under one of the straps of the mask. Bane dropped like sack of concrete.

John heard someone panting hard and it took a moment to realize it was himself. His palms were slick with cold sweat as he edged forward, nudging the fallen form with the point of his shoe. Bane didn't stir.

 _It's done. It's over_ , John thought.

He'd expected to feel relived, maybe vindicated. But bile, hot and stinging, tried to crawl up his throat. Why did justice feel so much like murder?

 He didn't know how long he stood there, but was pulled out of his daze by the sound of a police siren. Stupid of him. He should have known someone would call at the sound of a gunshot -- and had to hastily make his retreat. He threw the gun in the river.

He knew Bruce Wayne would have been ashamed of him, if he were still alive, and that was the worst part of it all.

It took him a long time to fall asleep that night, back in his apartment in the warmth of his bed. When he woke, he was again in the cave and 'I've Got You Babe' by Sonny and Cher was playing on his crappy radio alarm.

He didn't know if he should laugh or cry.

 

 

 


	4. Day 5

**Day 5**.

 

There had to be an explanation for what was going on.

John spent a few hours at the public library, searching the internet for any mention of a time loop or repeating day. What he found was less than helpful: heated internet arguments about the nature of time and space, with threads falling into name calling and cries of "troll" within a few pages.

He even thumbed through his like-new copy of the Bible he'd been given way back in his time at St. Swithins, though he didn't remember any mention of a repeating day in all of the mandatory Bible study classes. He gave up after an hour. It was getting dark, anyway. Night was falling and he should get out and patrol.

He wished Bruce Wayne were still alive. Not only because it meant John would have a much-needed mentor to show him how the hell the suit worked, and maybe the computer systems too (and yes, having a rich benefactor would be nice. John had no money for the upkeep of Batman's toys. He was going to be up shit creek when something vital broke) but it would be great to have someone to talk too.

John's partner was dead. Jim Gordon was... understanding, but he was weighed down by his own demons even if he didn't have his hands full putting the police department back together. Frankly, John couldn't stand to see the disappointment in Gordon's eyes if he thought he was crazy.

Maybe John _was_ crazy, or a masochist. Or maybe he was just desperate. Either way, he found himself again in the alley at 9:12, PM. Just in time for his least favorite terrorist (and that's saying something. The news reports of the Joker alone gave him months of nightmares as a child).

"You are not Bruce Wayne," Bane said.

John sighed.

"Look, before we do this... do you ever get daja vu?" John asked. Then, when Bane didn't answer he clarified, "You know, the feeling you've done--"

"I have heard of the phrase, yes." Bane raised his hands to hook them over his chest. John was beginning to think of that as his 'considering pose'. The moment where he was probably promoted in Bane's head from mildly interesting bug to squash to mildly interesting small animal to torture and kill.  "Why do you ask?"

In for a penny... "Because I--we've done this before," John blurted. "It's not a feeling. You've killed me three times already." He paused. "I've killed you once."

Bane's eyes narrowed. "Have you." He stepped forward and it was everything John could do not to move back. He knew the power in those fists too well.

"Yeah, I have," John said as belligerently as he could manage, his hand balled into fists.  Bane was nearly chest to chest with him now, and even though John was a tall man he had to look up to meet his eyes. His gray, pretty, pretty eyes. "So? Do you remember doing this? Fighting me here, before?"

Bane considered him for a moment. "No," he said almost in regret. "I do not."

John was never quite sure what he did. Only that Bane's right hand flashed out and there was a sharp pain to his neck. The world around him went briefly white, then black.

But when John woke, he was not in his cave. He was in Bane's.


	5. Still Day 5

 

John woke, sore, warm, and with his hands bound over his head.

He looked around blearily, at first not understanding what was wrong, only that something was. Then his eyes fell upon Bane who sat near a small cooking fire.

John jerked, trying to scramble up and away at the same time. He knocked his head on a low ceiling -- he was in an alcove of some sort -- and his bare legs fouled on ragged blankets and pillows.        

He was in a bed. Bane's bed by the look of it. And his suit was gone, leaving John in just his boxers.

Bane glanced up at him with mild interest. He had a piece of Batman's gear in his lap -- one of the bladed arm braces.  Seeing John awake, he set it aside.

"What is your name?" Bane asked.

John shook his head. Fear coiled in his gut. Oh God, the day hadn't repeated, which meant this was real. This had consequences.

"What are you doing?" John demanded instead, meaning the bed, his near nakedness, the fact he was still alive. Everything. "Where am I?"

Bane's eyes narrowed. He rose in one smooth motion and knelt over John. John tried to kick out, tried to jerk his hands free from where they were tied to an eyehook overhead. What blows he did land with his elbows and knees did nothing to Bane. With one large hand, Bane grabbed John under the chin. The other twisted John's head back and forth as if checking his eyes for signs of concussion.

Bane made a low, almost thoughtful growl that was distorted and chewed through the metal mask. "Your name," Bane repeated. Heat rolled off the terrorist like a furnace, making all of the hair on John's body stand up on end. To his horror, his body started reacting in other ways as well.

"Fuck you!" he spat, praying Bane wouldn't glance down between them. His dick seemed to have different idea about what was going on than his brain.

Bane's hand around his throat tightened, just enough to cut John's air. Then it relaxed again. "Answer my question and I shall answer yours."

Batman's disguise wasn't to keep John safe, it was to keep everyone else around him safe. Bruce Wayne had told him that, and though John was stripped of his suit, he knew he must keep his identity secret at all costs.

"Tom," he blurted. The first name that had come to mind. "Tom Solomon."

Bane smiled. He could see it in the slight crinkling around his eyes. "To answer your question, Tom, you have been unconscious for nearly an hour."

An hour. That was why he hadn't looped back. It was still the same day. John took a deep, ragged breath in relief.

Bane watched his face carefully. "You are not the Batman."

"Fuck you, yes I am."

"No. The Batman was a trained fighter. A warrior." Again, his fingers tightened on John's throat, stopping his air. "You are but an untrained boy who will only get himself killed."

John's dick actually twitched, right before the fear slammed into him. Bane wasn't loosening his grip this time. John struggled, but it was like struggling against inevitability. He probably couldn't pry Bane's fingers off him, even if he had use of his hands. Only when his vision started to gray at the edges did Bane loosen his grip.

John sucked in air, glaring at him.

"Let me go," he rasped. "I'll show you how much of a fighter I am."

Again, he got that curious impression that Bane was smiling. "Think on my words, Tom Solomon. We will speak further, in the morning."

He rose and John hated how pathetically grateful he felt for the reprieve. He drew his legs up, protecting his stomach and chest as well as hiding his lingering erection, and watched sullenly as Bane examined the suit piece by piece, then puttered around the room and made some sort of spicy tea at the fire. He didn't offer any to John, of course, not that he would have accepted.

John didn't see Bane drink, either. He simply took his cup and moved to the shadows. When he returned a few minutes later, he set the empty cup upside-down by the fire.

John took the time to catalogue the details of the room. From the dank smell and the look of the bricks, he wasn't in a cave at all. He guessed they were somewhere in the sewers, which would go a long way to explain the alleyway. There was an access to the sewers on the end on that street.

All this time, he'd probably caught Bane crawling back to his hole after a long day of... whatever terrorists did in their spare time. Something nefarious.

John didn't mean to fall asleep. He was uncomfortable, despite the blankets and pillows, his hands had gone numb over his head, and he hadn't missed the fact that there was only one nest of blankets in the room. If Bane expected him to share, he had another thing coming.

But after finishing his tea, the terrorist simply laid on his back by the fire, his hands laced over his stomach. Too hard core to need a pillow, apparently.

The raspy sound of his breathing was... weirdly soothing. That, and the warm air and the crackle of the fire, and John caught his head bobbing once, twice ...

 

_Then put your little hand in mine_  
There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb...  



	6. Day 6, 17, 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold onto your butts, kids. We're going to be skipping days. (I can't write out every single day, but they will still be in sequential order.)

_Then put your little hand in mine_  
There ain't no hill or mountain we can't climb...   


John grabbed the radio alarm clock and threw it as hard as he could. The cord caught, causing the clock to stall in mid-air and jerk sharply back down. It hit the stone floor and shattered in pieces of plastic and electronic components. The music stopped.  
  
Rubbing a hand down his face, John kicked free of his thin bedroll and stood. He felt stupid and childish for his tantrum.  
  
Even Bane had called him a child. He said John wasn't Batman. He wasn't a warrior.  
  
Well, he'd killed John enough to know, wouldn't he?

He felt the ghostly memory of Bane's body over his. That had been... sure, he liked to be held down sometimes when he was fucked, but that hadn't been bedroom play. That had been real and deadly and dangerous and he was _damn_ lucky Bane hadn't noticed his hard-on.

John quickly dressed and waited, shivering in the dawn air, at the nearest bus stop a mile down the road from the batcave. He meant to go to the library to do some research, but he was too antsy to sit and read.

He found himself, once again, in the alley. It wasn't hard to locate the manhole covering to the sewer. The place where Bane probably retreated every night. John stood over it for some time, thinking.

Bane was down there and it was John's duty to do something about it. Smoke him out, maybe.   
  
And then what? The only time he'd been able to overcome Bane was from thirty feet away with a gun, and it hadn't changed anything. John had to face up to it: He couldn't beat Bane one-on-one.  He was simply no match for the terrorist's power and experience.   
  
A corneal of an idea formed at that thought. Hunching his shoulders into his jacket, he turned away from the manhole.

John had bounced from foster home to foster home all around this section of town. It wasn't hard to locate the local YMCA and check the message board. Some of the local martial art academies provided low-cost self-defense classes as part of a community outreach program.  In fact, there would be a beginners taekwondo class this afternoon.  
  
Still, John hesitated. He'd taken a few of those types of classes as a kid, and knew they'd be filled with children and women who were looking for way to survive muggers and rapists. It wasn't exactly the place for guys in their early twenties, former cops. Besides, the Karate Kid movies were BS. It would take more than wax-off, wax-on to get good at any martial art. But...  
  
If he kept repeating days, what else did he have but time?  
  
John signed his name on the bottom of the signup sheet.  
  
****  
  
He was right. He was the only male over the age of twelve in the class. The instructor, a tired looking woman with gray streaks in her hair, gave him an arch look. He returned it with a shrug, but she said nothing as she directed the entire class to line up and begin stretching.  
  


* * *

 

  
 **Day 17.**  
  
"Is this your first class?" the taekwondo instructor, Angela, asked John as they went through their moves. (Angela was a recently divorced mother of two teenage girls. She'd moved to Gotham to start a new life a few weeks prior to the Occupation, and it was only her skill in martial arts and her determination that had kept her little family alive. She told the story as part of her background prior to the first class, every time.)  
  
John shrugged and remembered his foot-placement as he practiced a few snap-kicks. Angela always corrected him on it before, but now she stood back and watched quietly.

 "I took some classes as a kid," John said.  
  
"Looks like you remembered more than most." It was the first bit of praise he'd received from her and he tried not to smile. "You know," she said, "we have regular classes for beginning students on Thursdays if you're interested."  
  
That wasn't going to help him any. Thursday was two days off, which may as well be a million years away to him. "What about Tuesdays?"   
  
"Our Northern Sholin instructor has the dojo on Tuesdays," she said, shaking her head. "It's a style of kung-fu."  
  
John perked up. _Kung fu?_

 

 

* * *

 

 

**Day 18.**

 

The Sholin teacher (he didn't give his name, but asked to be called 'Sifu') was an aged man who's head came up maybe to John's chest. John tried not to judge, but he was hoping to learn how to fight someone bigger (say, like Bane) rather than someone smaller.

Then Sifu deftly flipped another student -- the largest in the class, and who looked like he could have eaten the old man for lunch -- onto his back with so much skill and grace it looked like he was dancing.

John blinked. Yeah, okay, he was going to have to figure out a way for Sifu to teach him that move. Even if Bane beat him to death again afterwards, it might be worth it just to put him on his back.


End file.
